Chapter Text
02:13 AM - Sunday, October 26th 1997
Mulder had one ankle crossed over the other, his heels resting on the wooden desk right over scuff marks that had been made from his constant disrespect of furniture, especially that of which was government-issued.
His right hand aimlessly flipped through the file propped open in his lap, and his left pinched a pencil in which he was using the eraser end to scratch his back.
He had already read the entire file ten times over, which was easy, considering it was only two pages long - or at least it had been when he had first gotten it.
With little to no information, he could hardly even consider it a case; most people hadn’t, and that was how it had ended up on his desk in the first place.
It was unsolvable… until it wasn’t.
The door opened, and Scully walked in. She left the door open and moved into the centre of the room. She was visibly unhappy and bedraggled.
“Mulder, unless you tell me our entire universe is on the brink of destruction and the only person who can stop it is me, I see no reason for you to have dragged me out of bed at-” she paused and pulled up her sleeve, squinting at her watch, “two AM on Sunday morning,” Scully groaned and dropped her arm down.
Mulder swept his legs down to the ground and snapped the file shut, a boyish grin on his lips as he sprung to his feet.
“What do you know about vampires, Scully?”
“Mulder-”
He cut her off by slamming the file down on the desk. He placed his hands on his hips and jerked his head to the side, gesturing for her to pick it up.
She sighed as she stepped forward and picked up the file, precariously opening it and running her fingers over the papers within.
“I know the only important thing that there is to know, which is they are creatures of gothic fiction. Heavy emphasis on that last word, Mulder, fiction,” She said with a sigh as she started to read. “What exactly am I looking at?”
“A list of all the people to go missing under suspicious circ*mstances in New Orleans over the past month.”
“Yeah, I got that, but why am I looking at it? And what the hell has it got to do with vampires?”
Mulder’s grin widened as he rounded the desk and perched against the edge. “Keep reading.”
Scully knitted her brows together as her finger traced along the words whilst she read. She flipped over the page and pouted. “A body showed up?”
“Yup. Take a look at the post-mortem,” Mulder said, crossing his arms over his chest in a near smug manner.
She squinted and read, then realisation struck, and she sighed. Scully closed the file and threw it down to his desk, her arms coming to cross over her chest.
“Alright, so nearly all the blood of the victim was found missing, two puncture wounds at the neck – and you’re saying a vampire is the only reasonable explanation for this? We’ve dealt with cases like this before, Mulder, and surprisingly, we never actually found vampires. Yes, we found people who thought they were vampires and killed in a certain manner because of it, but never actual vampires. Do you know why, Mulder?” Scully rattled off, looking up at him with that look.
Mulder deadpanned to her.
“Because they don’t exist.”
“'cause they don’t exist, yeah, yeah – just hold your tongue a sec,” He huffed and swept the file into his lap.
Mulder could feel Scully’s scepticism radiate off her as she eyed him suspiciously whilst he reproduced the list of missing people.
“Do you see any connection between these people, Scully?” Mulder asked as he got up and walked over to the projector. He slid the paper underneath it and flipped it on, adjusting the paper until the words unblurred on the big screen.
Scully pouted in thought, and she slowly started to shake her head. “No, am I supposed to?”
Mulder grinned and shook his head. “No, not unless you’re familiar with the inner workings of the New Orleans crime scene.”
She frowned. “Meaning what? All these people are criminals?”
“Oh, they’re criminals, alright. Bad to the bone, each and every one. Not necessarily directly connected to one another, but they are what you and I would consider nasty pieces of work,” Mulder said, sliding down the list of names until he stopped at the last one. He tapped it. “Jack Murphy. The last one to go missing and the first one to have turned up.”
Scully sighed, looking between Mulder and the projected names. “I don’t understand what you are trying to get at here, Mulder. Do you seriously think all of these disappearances are connected? That list contains what? 20? 30 people?”
“32.”
“And your only connection is that they are all criminals?”
Mulder slowly shook his head. “No, they’re not just criminals, Scully. These are so much more than that; they’re evil; they’re evildoers.”
Scully looked up at him with a blank expression, blinking slowly before she sighed. “Evildoers?” She repeated back to him, her head dipping forward with her brows raised. “Are you hearing yourself, Mulder? You sound ridiculous! Dare I ask how this comes back to the vampire theory – besides the apparent cause of death, that is?” She laughed breathlessly.
“You’re gonna wish you hadn’t,” He responded with a coy grin. “You’re familiar with New Orleans and its general paranormal status, right?” He asked as he started to wander back towards the bookshelf pressed behind his desk.
Scully followed him with her eyes as he nodded. “I’m aware of the kinds of things whispered back and forth, the things people claim to see. But, I don’t follow.”
“You’re right with that one-” He said, his back turned to her as he rifled through his bookcase, looking for something in particular. “But you don’t get it, Scully. That place has an entirely different energy. People don’t just claim to see things; there have been mass reports of apparitions, claims of whole buildings appearing and disappearing out of thin air – that place is a hot spot for all kinds of activity. And not to mention the importance it holds to vampires.”
“Right and there it is… Vampires, again. Mulder, I’m exhausted, and so far, you have given me no plausible reason to have dragged me out of bed and down here. I’m going home, and you can pray to God I don’t beat your ass first thing Monday morning,” Scully grumbled and turned around, moving for the door.
Mulder turned around, too. Three books were clutched in his grip, and he dropped them to his desk.
“Alright, alright, I’ve been beating around the bush. Just hear me out for this last bit,” He said and spread out the books so they were lined up in a particular order.
Scully sighed deeply just as she got to the door. She stopped walking and wound her shoulders up until they touched her ears.
Mulder’s lips twitched into a smile. He knew he’d got her.
Slowly, Scully turned around and slunk back around his desk.
“Are you familiar with any of these books?” He asked, gesturing to the three books he had laid out before him.
Two of which were worn out and dog-eared, well used, whilst the other seemed relatively new.
Scully’s eyes swept over the books, and her lips turned down into a frown. She shook her head.
“Am I supposed to?” She asked, a sigh mingled with her breath as she lifted her head to meet his gaze.
“Interview with the Vampire. The Vampire Lestat. Queen of the Damned. All three of these books detail the lives of vampires and tell tales that are almost impossible to believe, and yet they are so realistic, they feel so real like they actually happened,” Mulder said, his fingers brushing over his copy of ‘Interview with the Vampire’.
Scully snorted beside him. “What, you’re literally taking fiction as fact now, Mulder?”
“That’s the thing Scully… Despite its contents, all three were published and released as non-fiction. And each book backs the existence of real-life vampires,” Mulder said, his excitement palpable, but he was trying to reign it in.
Scully looked up at him, painfully unconvinced, as she reached out and picked up ‘Interview with the Vampire’. She turned her attention to the book, flipping through it, her nail running along lines Mulder had underlined before moving on to different marked pages.
“That’s the first one; it goes over the life of a man called Louis de Pointe du Lac and his turn to vampirism. Within it, he tells his life story to the reporter Daniel Molloy, who penned the book, a man I’m sure you are vaguely familiar with-”
Scully nods in recognition. “Right… Isn’t he that guy who lost the plot a couple of years back? I remember watching an interview on the news where he was promoting a book; I assume it was this one,” Mulder nodded. “He seemed pretty spry for a man in his 70s, but besides that and the odd scandals, he dropped off the radar,” She said, shrugging.
Mulder nodded and picked up ‘The Vampire Lestat’. “Now, this one is where things get interesting. In Interview with the Vampire, Louis claims this man Lestat turned him into a vampire in 1910. They’re lovers, and Louis ends up killing him with the help of their surrogate daughter. Eventually, he shows up again at the end of the book, but by then, it’s too late, as their daughter, Claudia, is dead, and Louis wants nothing to do with Lestat.”
Scully set the book down and shook her head slowly. He could sense he was losing her, especially after dropping casual dates reigning back almost a century. “And this is relevant, how exactly?”
Mulder thrummed his fingers over the cover of ‘The Vampire Lestat’. “Now, this one is essentially Lestat’s autobiography. He tells how he came to be a vampire in 1794, his adventures and the vampires he meets along the way before it leads up to his life with Louis in New Orleans. Then, it ended in a near-modern setting in 1993 with Lestat performing a concert in San Fransisco.”
Scully furrowed her brows, following Mulder with her eyes as he dropped the book and slipped a couple of photos out the back of the file, moving to the projector.
“Performed a concert?”
Mulder grinned. “Oh yeah, did I forget to mention Lestat also became a rockstar?” He asked, looking up at her as he slid the pictures under the projector. He swept up the clicker and stepped back, gesturing for Scully to come closer.
“This is Lestat de Lioncourt,” Mulder said and clicked the projector on.
A picture of a gorgeous blonde man, dripping in leather and fishnets, flashed on the projector screen. He was screaming into a microphone, the angle of the picture taken from someone in the crowd giving just a flash of a pair of very sharp teeth that looked suspiciously like fangs.
He clicked through a couple of different photos, ranging from professional photoshoots that were supposedly used to promote his band and other paparazzi shots.
“His name is actually Lestat? This guy is a real person?” Scully asked, not believing it as she said it. “He wrote a couple of those books, too? And what? He claims to be a vampire?” She sighed, her nose scrunching up.
“Oh, he did far more than claim, Scully,” Mulder clicked to the next photo, which showed the aftermath of the concert. “During this concert, according to eyewitnesses, he was taunting all of ‘vampire kind’, spilling their secrets of creation to all the mortals-”
He clicked through the pictures of what the concert venue and surrounding area looked like. It was a mess.
Black scorch marks littered the pit before the stage as well as just outside of the venue. A closer picture showed a tar-like substance almost moulded into the ground but the pictures were blurry and grainy.
“What the hell is that?” Scully said suddenly, stepping closer to the image.
“I don’t know for sure, but whatever it is, someone went an awful long way to make sure no one ever found out. These pictures weren’t taken in any official capacity. I pulled them off some conspiracy websites-”
Scully snorted.
Mulder pouted. “You got something to share with the class?”
She laughed and shook her head. “You have really stooped so low as to scrape the bottom of the barrel to try and connect dots that aren’t there, Mulder.”
He shot her a glare. “As I was saying, the people there claimed to see people in the crowd bursting into flames. No apparent accelerant or initial source of heat; they just exploded into flames. That goo? I think it’s the remains of said people. If thet even were people.”
Scully slowly turned her back to the projector screen and looked up at Mulder. “They burst into flames…” She responded dryly. “Mulder, you are pulling little pieces of information from random events that are hardly connected to one another; I genuinely cannot see what you are trying to show me.”
Mulder let out a frustrated hum, his tongue wetting his bottom lip as he shook his head.
“You don’t get it, Scully. When the police showed up, responding to all the 911 calls, they found nothing. Nothing but scorch marks. That goo? It was all gone, as was Lestat and his cohorts. Someone was trying to cover it up, and it wasn’t the government, or at least if it was, they did an excellent job at covering their tracks. I can’t find a single thing about this in our database. But why go through all that effort to hide this?” He asked, the question being rhetorical as he walked back over to his desk.
He picked up the last book and turned the cover to Scully. “It’s all explained right here,” He threw ‘Queen of the Damned’ to her and she caught it.
She eyed him before turning the book around in her hands, flipping through as she had done with the other one.
“Right there, Lestat explains exactly everything that happened, everything that led up to the concert and more. What happened after, too.”
Scully shook her head as she read through some of these quotes. “Mulder, it says here that the Queen of all vampires destroyed all those people, vampires, with her mind?”
“The fire gift,” Mulder corrected, and Scully glared at him.
She snapped the book shut and all but slammed it down on the desk. “Are you purposefully trying to wind me up? Mulder-” She said, almost in a disappointed tone. “We are talking about real people going missing; this is serious, and you have the gall to chalk it up to vampires? To a delusional ex-rockstar?”
“I never said this was Lestat.”
Scully co*cked her brow and huffed. “No, but you were about to, weren’t you? That was where you were taking the conversation, wasn’t it? You didn’t just happen to unload all this information, just to not bring it full circle.”
Mulder narrowed his eyes, but his lips betrayed him as the corners turned up into a sly smile. “Alright, you got me there. But guess the date Mr Lioncourt supposedly moved back to New Orleans. Take a stab.”
Scully sighed. “By any chance, does it just so happen to coincide roughly with the date the first person on your list went missing?”
Mulder grinned and clicked his fingers together. “Bingo! Gold star to Scully. Within the same week of Lestat’s reappearance in NOLA, the first three people on that list went missing.”
“So what, you think you’re the first person to make this connection?” She asked sceptically.
Mulder laughed and shook his head. “No, but I’m going to be the first one to take it seriously,” He said and swept all the photos from the projector and slotted them back into the file.
He could feel Scully's annoyance rumbling, from how she followed him with his every move to the way she kept her hands clasped together before her.
Mulder knew he was asking a lot, that in a sense he was going off very little and mostly circ*mstantial evidence, but to him? To him, it was like someone had drawn a line right through all the evidence with a bright yellow marker. There was something here; he knew it.
Whether Lestat de Lioncourt was a real vampire or not, he had something to do with these disappearances. Mulder was sure of it.
“You’ve proposed dozens of ridiculous explanations in the five years we have worked together, but I think this one is finally the one where I suggest Skinner get you some psychological help-”
Mulder snorted. “Do you really think it is so far-fetched? After all the things we’ve seen together?”
Scully laughed in short bursts. “Yes! Yes, I do, Mulder. I think it’s an utterly baseless theory, and you have been spending far too much time down here. Science can explain the things we’ve seen, for the most part, but vampires? Mulder, you are insinuating that there is a completely different superhuman race living amongst us!” She exclaimed, stepping closer to him. She threw her hands into the air for emphasis.
“Is it really that much more crazy than aliens? Because we’ve seen aliens-”
“Aliens. Aliens. Aliens! It always comes back to aliens with you,” She groaned, her hands flying to her face as she slowly dragged them down it. “Are you saying vampires are aliens then?”
Now Mulder was the one starting to get frustrated. “No. No, of course not, that would be stupid.”
“Oh, now that’s stupid?”
“I think they are of human origin; if they are real, that is. May I remind you I’m not trying to say that vampires are real, not entirely. But vampires, in particular the vampires we have seen in the books I showed you, are claiming to exist. And with all the context I’ve shown you, every little detail – something is going on. And it all boils down to one man. Lestat de Lioncourt.”
Mulder’s chest was near heaving with effort by the time he had stopped talking, bending his head down as he talked at Scully, so desperate to break through the wall of scepticism she had built around her so densely.
Scully very slowly lifted her head, and their eyes met in a stare. Her eyes visibly darted down to his heaving chest, then to his lips, before finally sticking to his eyes.
“Mulder, it’s obvious that something is going on. But a vigilante vampire on the prowl is not it.”
Mulder nodded his head, stepped behind his desk and pulled the drawer open.
“Okay, you might be right, or I might be right. All I’m asking is for you to do what you always do and trust me. Follow me. I know how it sounds, but that is even more reason to trust me – a leap of faith, Scully.”
Scully sighed deeply but said nothing. Mulder wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad sign.
Even after all these years, no matter how well Mulder thought he knew Scully – she would always find ways to surprise him. And he loved her for that.
Despite that, he tried his luck anyway.
He pulled out two tickets and held them in the small space between their faces. He slid them between his thumb and forefinger, dividing them to make a ‘v’ so he could poke his nose between them and cover his eyes.
Scully scoffed at him.
“I got the ways and means to New Orleans… I’m goin’ down by the river, where it’s warm and green…” Mulder sang lowly, pulling the tickets down from his face with a raised brow and a grin.
“What? Y’never heard of bloodletting?” He asked as Scully stared up at him with a mixture of mild disappointment laced with amusem*nt.
“What did you tell Skinner to get the travel bursary for those?” She asked. “Because if I won’t hear out your vampire theory, there is no way in hell Skinner is-”
Mulder snorted and tucked the plane tickets into his back pocket. He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and pulled it on, sleeve by sleeve.
“I’m not stupid, Scully. You don’t think I’ve learnt my lesson by now?”
She huffed through her nose with an amused, knowing look.
“I may have left the vampire bit out.”
“So you lied to him?”
Mulder pursed his lips and stacked up the books in front of him. He lifted them and held them in front of Scully until she opened her arms and caught them begrudgingly.
“Lied… Let him think what he wanted to believe… Same thing, no? It’s all relative Scully-”
He smacked his lips together and patted the top of the book pile in her arms.
“C’mon, you’ve got some catching up to do, and we have a plane to catch,” He said with a sly smile and picked up the case file, tucking it under his arm before moving across the office.
Scully groaned, her shoulders sagging in a defeated manner as she followed him.
“I can’t believe this.”
“No, but you soon will. Now, trust me on this one, Scully, I gotta feeling our world is about to be thrown upside down. Just wait and see.”
